Author Archives: Johnathan Lobel

Piatra Neamt Day 1

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Today we first visited two monasteries not far from each other – both monasteries being UNISCO heritage sites.  The first monastery is called Voroneţ and is generally considered one of the most beautiful monasteries in the Bukovina region of Romania.  Both the exterior and the interior of the church part of the monastery are covered with biblical paintings depicting scenes from the bible.  Throughout the years the sides of the church that were exposed to the elements got worn away while the other frescoes remain in very good condition.  The second monastery called Humor was very similar but much smaller in size than Voroneţ.

After the monasteries we traveled to Roman to visit the President of the Jewish Community of Roman.  Recently I had found a document about my twice great grandmother saying that she was from Roman, Romania so I had become interested in seeing what remains of the Jewish sites in Roman and hopefully getting some leads on my genealogical research.

We met up by the house of the President and headed to the remaining synagogue, at one time there were around 18 synagogues in Roman but most were destroyed by the communist government to make way for new buildings.  The specific synagogue we visited was situated precariously between apartment buildings and was difficult to get to.  The President shown us around the recently repainted synagogue named the Leipziger Synagogue after Leipzig in Germany where much of the funds for the construction of the synagogue had come from.  The main investors for the synagogue were merchants would come to Roman when traveling from Leipzig while selling their goods.  The synagogue also had a museum upstairs that documented the Jewish community in Roman mostly in the 20th century.

We then headed to the Jewish cemetery.  The grounds looked in poor shape as there was a lot of growth by the headstones much like Filantropia in Bucharest however the main building the President said had recently got a new coat of paint.  The two gypsies who maintain the cemetery had a list of all the people who rest in the cemetery and I found quite a few Lobels and Blumenfields (the maiden name of my twice great grandmother) however none of the names look familiar and the dates were far too late (Look at the pictures for the listings).

I had offered to take the President to lunch so we ate at a restaurant not far from where he lives.  It was difficult to talk to him because he did not know any English – we had to speak through our guide which was awkward.  Not much else was discussed about the Jewish community in Roman he mostly wanted to talk about Romanian politics with my guide.  After the meal I had thanked the President and gave him a donation.  I told the President I felt very honored that he would spend his time showing me these sites.

We then headed to Piatra Neamt to go to our hotel.  After resting in our room for a few hours we had gone to dinner at an Italian restaurant called Noire.  Apparently it was called one of the best restaurants in the entire country of Romania and it was very good.  The restaurant was quite inexpensive too, after having three bottles of water, one starter and two entrees the meal was only $18 total.

Tomorrow I am spending time in Piatra Neamt researching out my twice great grandmother.

Gara Humorului Day 1

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Today was quite an adventure!  We first picked up a hitchhiker that was going in our same general direction.  I was at first not so crazy about picking up hitchhikers but our guide seemed insistent about it so we consented.  She turned out to be very interesting to talk to.  She was a university student who was studying Geography at the local university in Sighet.  She spoke to us through our guide as she was talking only in Romanian.  After about an hour we dropped her off at her house and continued on to a wooden church.  The wooden church was covered with biblical paintings so that the local illiterate church members could understand the various biblical stories.  One of the locals working at the church was telling us about her old house and she invited us to come see it.

The lady invited us to see her house, so she came into our car and directed our guide a few kilometers down the road to her house.  At her house it was part farmhouse part house slit up into sections.  Her living room and kitchen were in one building, while a bedroom was in another building and so on.  After showing her the house she invited us into her kitchen to offer us some plum brandy and cheese, both of which she had made herself.  I had to decline the plum brandy as last time it had upset my stomach.

We left the house and continued up the road until we noticed a market set up on a dirt path.  We decided to stop and have a look.  The market was teeming with people and individual tents were set up with people selling anything from homemade cheese to farming tools.  While my brother and I perused the market, our guide had got into contact with a priest who served at another wooden church located across the street from the market.  He consented to show us the church.  It was much like the previous one however the biblical paintings were much better preserved.  Unfortunately however, the paintings on the celling were severely deteriorated due to damage from rain storms.

At our next stop, our guide described the house as a “museum for the peasant woman.”  When we arrived the only indication of a museum was a small sculpture depicting a peasant women and the rest of the “museum” was a gift shop where the women running the museum was selling various Romanian souvenirs.  It was however an interesting house that was maintained from what I understand largely how a traditional house in this part of Romania would be kept.

After driving a few more kilometers we stopped at a mill owned by two ladies.  The ladies at this mill made rugs off of machinery that was given to their grandmothers by Jews who had employed them.  However what I found most interesting about this place was the farmhouse where they kept livestock.  These ladies had a cow, many chickens that ran around the mill and two pigs.  The chickens just recently had hatched new chicks and we saw a cage where there were at least a dozen chicks.  After leaving the mill we went to have lunch at a restaurant which served traditional Romanian food.

We continued onto our final destination through the Carpathian Mountains, going on some roads that were in an appalling state.  We didn’t have to go far but it took us a while to get through the mountains because there were so many potholes in the road.  We were told by our guide that this road was the only pass through from Maramures to Bukovina county.  We were tired, so we stopped at a town to stock up on some water and some snacks.  Our guide decided to check out some footwear at the local store.  Apparently these shoes were made not far from this store and were priced excellently considering their quality.  I liked a few shoes, so I deiced to purchase two of them for only 129 lei each or 70$ total.

We got back into the car and shortly arrived at our hotel.  My brother and I had a nice dinner after settling in.  Near the end of the diner we were joined by our guide .  Tomorrow we are going to Piatra Neamt.

Sighet Day 1

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Today we went to visit what is called the Merry Cemetery.  This cemetery on each gravestone has a colorful picture of either a significant time in the person’s life or a scene of what lead to their ultimate demise.  We arrived at the cemetery just when a busload of German tourists had just come.  The cemetery was crowded with tourists and church goers who were attending service for the church on the same property.  It was fascinating to see the pictures on the gravestones.  After I had my fill of the gravestone pictures, I migrated into the church to see their traditional church service.  All the women were dressed in traditional costumes and everyone sang along to the prayers.

After the cemetery we went across the street to eat a traditional Romanian meal served and cooked by an older lady.  Plum brandy was served and alcohol was flowing freely.  By the time the lady had served the first course, I had already downed a few shots of her brandy.  The room this meal was being served at was decorated with plates and colorful handmade blankets.  The first course was a vegetable soup with meatballs.  The second course consisted of stuffed cabbage leaves and sausage with polenta.  The meal was thoroughly enjoyable.  We thanked the lady and continued towards Sighet.

When we arrived in Sighet we visited the Victims of Communism Museum, which was housed at the former communist prison.  Each exhibit was in a former jail cell and you continued on to see each exhibit.  The topics ranged from how Communist law was enforced to how the government suppressed dissent.  We felt the museum had an agenda but my brother and I were interested about the topic of communism as it isn’t often we hear this perspective of history.

After the museum we visited Elie Wiesel Memorial House.  Elie Wiesel is a famous Jewish author who was a Holocaust survivor and a Nobel Prize Winner.  Frankly I was not so familiar with his works, so I didn’t get too much out of the museum.  However, we had an English speaking guide show us around the museum, which made the exhibits more meaningful.  We then continued on our hotel.

After resting awhile at the hotel we had dinner in the back terrace.  Still a bit full from lunch we had a small dinner.  It was warm but we benefited from a constant mist that was sprayed from overhead misters installed to keep diners cool.  Tomorrow we are going to Bukovina.

Satu Mare Day 1

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Today we were headed towards Satu Mare near the Hungarian and Ukrainian border.  Our first stop was at a Roman ruin near the town of Morigrad called Porolissum.  It was however very difficult to get to Porolissum.  After a couple kilometers of hilly dirt roads we arrived at the Roman ruin where we were greeted by a man holding an ax and wearing a white hat.  He started to speak in Romanian about the type of buildings that once stood at Porolissum.  All the sudden he got inside our guide’s car and we headed over a couple of dirt roads until we reached a clearing with a gate.  We opened the gate to find ruins of a small coliseum.  We walked into the center of the coliseum only to find the echoing of our voices – this apparently was by design.  The coliseum had two gates on each side where animals and political dissidents would enter the stage presumably to do battle – the guy told us they even found a skull of a tiger.  We thanked this guy and left to our next destination, the Transylvanian Holocaust museum, which was a synagogue that was converted into a museum by an American businessman.

When we arrived at the museum it was closed due to renovations so we decided to have some lunch at a local Italian restaurant.  The restaurant appeared to be in a converted barn and smelt of cigarette smoke.  I ordered a margarita pizza and my brother ordered spicy salami pizza.  We both enjoyed our pizzas but couldn’t ignore how warm it was starting to get outside.  We entered our guide’s car again and the temperature read 32 degrees Celsius; remember that’s with humidity.

Our guide decided to make an impromptu stop at the home of a famous Romanian politician Corneliu Coposu.  Coposu was a political figure who was imprisoned many years during communism and eventually formed his own party (Christian-Democratic National Peasants’ Party) after the fall of communism in Romania in 1989.  The home was now what looked like a school with a small room for an exhibit for Coposu.

We arrived at our hotel the Poesis in Satu Mare, a beautiful Victorian hotel.  Tomorrow we are off to Sighet – east of Satu Mare.

Cluj-Napoca Day 1

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Today we traveled towards the city of Cluj-Napoca in the north-western part of the country.  The name Cluj is the Romanian name of the city, while Napoca is the Roman given name to the city.  We first stopped in the citadel-turned-city of Alba Iulia.  The citadel or Alba Carolina Carolina was built during the Roman times, eventually owned by the Hungarians, and then finally by the Romanians.  It had a Roman Catholic Church (St. Michaels) that was completed during the 13th century and had citadel walls with bombardments.  We walked around the citadel wall a little while then decided to stop at a restaurant for a light snack.  We had lunch by the city walls at what our guide called a “medieval” restaurant – it seemed to have Eastern European greatest hits like goulash and sour soup.  We were served by waitresses dressed in medieval period specific costumes.  It was so warm outside it was difficult to walk around, however the small lunch was rejuvenating.

We continued on to the car to go to Turda, a salt mine near Cluj.  We arrived at the salt mine only to discover that it had closed due to maintenance.  We left and continued on our way towards Cluj arriving in the city in about a half hour.  We unloaded our luggage in our hotel room and went off on a short walk around the city.  We broke from our guide to have some dinner with ourselves.  We ate at a restaurant that served simple bar food not far from our hotel.  My meal was so/so however I enjoyed my Mojito.  Tomorrow we are going to Satu Mare by the Hungarian border.

Sibiu Day 2

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Today we spent the day in Sibiu.  We first went to a Hungarian cathedral and then we walked down the road towards Sibiu’s old synagogue.  Despite the fact that it has never been renovated before, the synagogue was in excellent condition.  Afterwards we went to Romania’s oldest museum, (the Muzeul Bruckenthal) which is actually a collection of five museums that seemed to mostly center around artifacts and weapons collected from several eras of history.  We decided to have lunch after the museum at a Romanian restaurant where I had pork schnitzel.  We then walked to the city market, which is set up in a town square on outside the citadel.  A wide variety of fruits and vegetables were being sold, alongside – strangely enough some gold fish.  We then headed towards a section of the old city wall.  You could actually go inside the wall and see where people were armed to protect the city but we didn’t go inside.  We went back to our hotel to rest for a few hours and then we walked to a great Italian restaurant in lower town called Max.  Ricky had a pizza and I had steak with red wine sauce.  Tomorrow we are driving north to Cluj-Napoca.

Sibiu Day 1

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Today was essentially just a travel day.  We traveled from Bucharest to Sibiu in the north in Transylvania.  However we traveled along a very scenic route which snakes over the Carpathian Mountain range and according to our guide was the tallest road in Europe.  We made a pit stop in Curtea de Argeș at the monastery that serves as a burial ground for the former Romanian kings.  The kings are actually buried inside the church which was built in the 16th century.  The church, as with any eastern orthodox church had pictures depicting scenes from the bible painted all over the walls inside.  The church was in remarkable shape considering how old it was.  Continuing on into the Carpathian Mountains we passed by a few gypsy villages and saw quite a few still getting around town on horse and buggies.

We continued on through the Carpathian Mountain range.  A long the way we visited various shops people had set up beside the road.  One in particular was located at the summit of the mountain and had stands set up to sell souvenirs and snacks to people passing by.  A few of the stands sold various cured meats and sausages and another sold rock crystals.  One old lady was selling plachinta, which is similar to a crepe but a bit larger and folded differently.  I had mine filled with chocolate.  At the summit there were still some traces of snow on the ground and the air was noticeably thinner.

We continued on down the hill to our destination, Sibiu located in Transylvania.  We arrived at our hotel and had dinner across the street at a Romanian restaurant then afterwards toured central Sibiu which was recently renovated with help from Prince Charles of England.  Tomorrow we are going to be spending more time in Sibiu.

Bucharest Day 3

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Today was slightly more relaxed than yesterday.  We saw various sites around Bucharest starting with the Palace of the Parliament (PP).  Before the PP was constructed a huge swab of Bucharest had to be leveled to make way for the new structure beginning with “relocating” the individuals that lived in the area.  PP was constructed starting in 1984 by than Romanian communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu but was eventually completed in 1997 – many years after he was killed in the revolution in 1989.  The structure like many communist buildings was big and imposing, many fixtures (such as carpets, chandeliers and window drapes) that were record breaking in size.  Ceaușescu had even grand ideas for the PP but had never come to fruition because of his death.

After the PP we went to a nearby Christian Orthodox campus that housed the patriarch of Romania.  In every Christian Orthodox country there is a patriarch that functions similar to the pope in the Vatican.  One of the structures on the campus was the original building used by the Romanian parliament that had since moved to the PP due to concerns about earthquake safety.  When the parliament moved the government donated the building to the patriarch of Romania.

After visiting the campus of the patriarch we visited the historical district in Bucharest – Lipscani.  Lipscani was named after German merchants that came to Bucharest from Leipzig to sell their wares who were traveling through the area.  Lipscani is an area of Bucharest which needs much more work as many once beautiful buildings are decaying and derelict – however there is much construction in the area and I am told it used to be much worse.  We had lunch at what our guide called the oldest inn in Bucharest named Manuc’s Inn.  We had an array of grilled meats and mustard – it was a fairly hearty lunch.  Afterwards we visited a 15th century archeological site located underground the city.  We set off to the Historical Museum of Bucharest but it was closed due to Romanian Flag Day.

We then traveled to the Village Museum which consisted of historical houses brought from different regions of Romania.  Because of different environments of the country and the local materials available – the houses from one region to another had a very different look.  For example, houses from Maramureș in the north would look different than a county in the south because Maramureș has a different kind of timber.  The ground was nice and lined with trees – it felt more like a park than a museum.  We were than taken to Revolution Square where our tour guide (who told us he was at the Romanian revolution in 1989) told us of his account of what happened in 1989.  If you are interested click here to see a video of the revolution in this square in 1989.

For dinner we were tired so we just decided to eat dinner at our hotel’s restaurant.  The food was okay, but it was nice to eat close by.  Tomorrow we are going to Sibiu, a German town in Transylvania.

Bucharest Day 2

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Today we dedicated the day to seeing the Jewish sites in Bucharest.  We first started off the day with a nice breakfast at the hotel, a mostly continental breakfast with various cold cuts of meat and cheese a long with pastries.  We met up with Eduard, our tour guide at 10am and went to our first synagogue with doubled as a museum of Jewish people in Romania.  Eduard has a relationship with the rabbis or the people who run these sites so we were able to get access to these sites that isn’t normally available to the public, which was very nice.  This particular synagogue was of Polish origin and was designed in a Moorish style.  We went to another synagogue afterwards but did not go inside as it was currently under renovation.  We instead went to the adjacent offices which houses records of Jewish people who lived in Bucharest to ask about records relating to our relatives.

We found information regarding the whereabouts of Soloman Lobel, Joesph’s father in a nearby cemetery Filentropia.  We went to the cemetery and found the grave site hidden away in overgrown bushes.  We had paid someone to clear the brush so we could verify it and take a few pictures.  It was indeed Soloman Lobel – however I couldn’t be absolutely sure if it is the one which I am related to – however it seems to make sense.  The death date seems to match and the age of him seems to relate to other information I have gathered on him.  Interestingly Filentropia was the cemetery of elites in the city, so anyone buried here had some money or was very well known in the community.  From what I’ve been told Solomon owned a tavern or bar in the city so it would make sense he would be buried at this cemetery.

After the cemetery we visited one of the longest running Yiddish Theaters in the word then we visited Bucharest’s orthodox synagogue and a local Jewish community center.  We finished the day with a meal at a Italian restaurant called Il Calcio located by the concert hall.

Bucharest Day 1

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Today we arrived in Bucharest after almost two days of travel from Pittsburgh.  We had a few snags along the way for our flights but eventually we got here.  We met with our tour guide at the airport in Bucharest and he took us into the old district of Bucharest while awaiting our room to be ready to check into.  This part of Bucharest is closed off to vehicle traffic and is very pedestrian friendly.  We had lunch during this time and eventually it started to rain heavily and was forced to retreat underneath a canopy to wait out the rain.  We check into our hotel and spend the majority of our time sleeping from our long traveling day.  Around seven we got up and went to dinner at a nearby Romanian restaurant called La Mama.  We had Romanian staples like polenta and chicken schnitzel.  My brother had bell peppers stuffed with minced meat.